avoids. The play is not to remind us of the stage, but of life. A
difference in vision and method difficult to estimate divides Robertson's
direction: "Sam. (astonished L. corner)" from Hauptmann's "Mrs. John
rises mechanically and cuts a slice from a loaf of bread, as though under
the influence of suggestion." Robertson indicates the conventionalised
gesture of life; Hauptmann its moral and spiritual density.

The descriptive stage direction, effectively used by Ibsen, is further
expanded by Hauptmann. But it remains impersonal and never becomes direct
comment or even argument as in Shaw. It is used not only to suggest the
scene but, above all, its atmosphere, its mood. Through it Hauptmann
shows his keen sense of the interaction of man and his world and of the
high moral expressiveness of common things. To define the mood more
clearly he indicates the hour and the weather. The action of _Rose Bernd_
opens on a bright Sunday morning in May, that of _Drayman Henschel_
during a bleak February dawn. The desperate souls in _The Reconciliation_
meet on a snow-swept Christmas Eve; the sun has just set over the lake in
which Johannes Vockerat finds final peace. In these indications Hauptmann
rarely aims at either irony or symbolism. He is guided by a sense for the
probabilities of life which he expresses through such interactions
between the moods of man and nature as experience seems to offer. Only in
_The Maidens of the Mount_ has the suave autumnal weather a deeper
meaning, for it was clearly Hauptmann's purpose in this play

"To build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea."

Hauptmann has also become increasingly exacting in demanding that the
actor simulate the personal appearance of his characters as they arose in
his imagination. In his earlier plays the descriptions of men and women